Building dedication celebrated with Italian foodscape

GRAND RAPIDS -- Just mention food from Italy, and it brings to mind rustic restaurants, overflowing marketplaces and ripe vineyards.

This Italian foodscape was replicated for tonight's dedication of the Secchia Institute for Culinary Education at Grand Rapids Community College.

The elaborate undertaking was to recognize a sizable donation from Peter and Joan Secchia to the GRCC hospitality education department. GRCC officials and the Secchias declined to disclose the amount of the gift.

"In honor of that gift, we're re-naming our department the Secchia Institute for Culinary Education," said Randy Sahajdack, director of the culinary school. "The next message I have to give you is that nothing changes. We're not an Italian cooking school. We're all about culinary education."

The leading gift by the Secchia family also represents new opportunities for the program to grow and respond to the needs of the hospitality industry, said Andrew Bowne, GRCC executive director of college advancement.

"The community college is an asset to our whole community," said Peter Secchia, the former U.S ambassador to Italy, who spent the evening enjoying the Italian cuisine and teaching other guests how to say "Buona sera" -- good evening in Italian. "And this culinary school does wonderful things. We should all be proud of the contributions of the community college."

Tonight, the culinary school faculty, students, purveyors and donors were working as one: to ensure the Secchia Institute for Culinary Education will produce the best chefs in the world.

A cornucopia from five regions of Italy, including Secchia's ancestral home of Piedmont, stretched throughout the culinary school. Elaborate taste bars included cured olives; gelato that showed off flavors rarely found in America, including cinnamon, fig, amaretti, hazelnuts and gianduja; and biscotti, twice-baked, crunchy Italian cookies.

The celebration also was designed to recognize the craft of the chef and to show off the culinary school's strengths.

"We wanted this to be very active, to show what goes on at a culinary school," Sahajdack said.

Simultaneously, the culinary school is hosting the Nation's Cup, a three-day competition for one of the highest honors for a culinary school. Six teams of young culinarians -- from Barbados, Canada, Chile, Mexico, Scotland and the United States -- are vying for the title, competing in a variety of categories through Saturday. Each two-student team must create and cook a course using two ingredients revealed at the start of the face-off.

"Every dish is a revelation, a mouthful of many flavors," said master chef Josef Huber of the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, one of three judges who include Peruvian-born chef Eddie Morales and chef Joseph M. George of LochenHeath in Williamsburg.

"This culinary competition is another level of learning," Sahajdack said. "There is a preciseness about competition that is not normally enforced in regular restaurant dining."